


feed her poetry (or something like that)

by ej3467273



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: F/M, Literally written in one hour, Villain talk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-18 23:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11884893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ej3467273/pseuds/ej3467273
Summary: Peter is dealing with the fact that he likes his best friend Michelle more than a friend. During a fight with a super villain, he gets some much-needed advice.





	feed her poetry (or something like that)

“You know, it’s kind of funny, right? The whole, you can’t be best friends with the opposite sex stereotype because you end up falling for each other deal? I laughed at it, because it should be incredibly sexist that you can’t just be ‘friends’ with a girl,” Spider-Man explained to his opposite as he expertly maneuvered himself to dodge an incoming car thrown at him. He aimed his right webshooter at a nearby building and zipped towards it. 

“But, I’m friends with other girls. Betty, Cindy, hell even Liz is talking to me again after that one disaster!” Spider-Man jabbered as he landed, sticking to a window as the multiple limbed opponent snarled in anger, this time ripping up a fire hydrant and tossing it straight where Peter was. Peter shot several webs to capture it before letting it fall to the ground. “Yet I’m not as close to Betty or Cindy as I am to Michelle. Me and Michelle are tight knit, homies for life. Don’t ever tell her that I said homies for life cause she crucify me along the Appian Way.”

“And yet every time I see her, my heart beats a bit faster, my palms are sweaty, and it almost makes me want to eat my aunt’s spaghetti, despite her being  _ horrible  _ at it. Seriously, she’s an absolute  _ goddess  _ at baking, would make Gordon Ramsey cry with tears of joy, but I’m getting sidetracked here, “ Peter then propels himself off the building as his enemy hurled himself onto the building himself, robot limbs sinking deep into the brick foundation. “By the way, your robot limbs?  _ Awesome.  _ Sentient AI? _ ”  _

Doc Ock really hated fighting Spider-Man. He was too distracted to actually, you know,  _ fight,  _ but he was also too wily and too slippery to pin down and properly destroy. Spider-Man was one of the few obstacles in his way and he needed to destroy him if he wanted to complete his mission. 

But the boy was going on and on about this Michelle and quite frankly, it was getting on his nerves. He was here to fight, to battle, to conduct the decisive action that would make or break a supervillain or a superhero. And yet as he tossed another car across the street at Spider-Man, the masked vigilante was refusing to actually retaliate. 

“I know her like the back of my hand. She loves poetry, especially Maya Angelou and other powerful women. She’s super smart, smarter than me and almost everyone we know, and she’s a badass! She once got jumped in an alley and I swooped in to do my neighborhood Spider-Man thing and she maced the dude!” Spider-Man said in a lovestruck tone, his spider eyes widening in awe. “But I can’t tell her I like her. She’s my best friend! And I already had the conversation about the whole cliche, stereotypical, she’s going to  _ kill me  _ deal. Yes, Karen, I know that I should be fighting Doc Ock, but I just need to vent!”

_ Shut up, shut up, shut up,  _ Doc Ock shouted to himself. 

But he allowed himself some sympathy for his wily and dangerous foe. After all, he had once been in love before everything went to hell.  _ You used to be in love so many years ago,  _ he reminded himself. 

He remembered when he first met Rosalie all those years ago, on those college steps. He was trying to explain the theory of relativity to her and she was lecturing him on T.S Eliot. After twenty years of marriage, she finally got what he was trying to say. 

He still didn’t know what the hell that British guy was trying to say after all those years.  _ And I never will.  _ Especially after the incident. Now he...well now he didn’t know what he was. The limbs had a mind of their own. And that mind was telling him to kill Spider-Man.

But then the memories of love and marriage came rolling in. It made him remember his humanity, who he was as a person.  _ Young love.  _

“Spider-Man, love should never be a secret,” he suddenly said out loud and the spider eyes widened once more. Doc Ock put down the car he was about to heft at Spider-Man and the owner quickly got back in and drove away, taking advantage of not having her property destroyed. “If you keep something as complicated as love stored deep inside, it’s going to make you sick.”

“It’s not love!” Spider-Man protested, landing on the street. “I just like her...more than friends. A  _ lot  _ more than friends.” 

Otto Octavius chuckled deeply, not believing that his archnemesis wasn’t in love. The way he spoke about this Michelle, it was evident that he was. It was the way he had once spoke of Rosalie before she died and sent him on the path he was on today. 

“I got lucky when I was about your age,” Otto said, his robot limbs relaxing as he temporarily overtook his body. “I met a woman who loved me for who I was before I turned” gesturing to himself, cool robot limbs and all “into this. But it wasn’t perfect. I had to work at it.”

“How’d you do it? Love at first sight? Michelle would punch me if I ever said something like that and she has a mean right hook…”

“No, we were friends at first, just like you and this Michelle. She was an English Literature major and I was a physics major. She told me once that she knew it wasn’t going to be easy,” Otto reminisced -the soft voice of Rosalie lulling him to sleep, explaining the complexity of T.S Eliot and Yeats- “And it wasn’t. We had to work for the longest time, but she knew me, she knew my flaws...she loved despite them.”

“But how did you get her to fall in love with you?” Spider-Man asked, taking a seat on a bench that was miraculously not destroyed in their fight. “I don’t know how to do that.”

Doc Ock took a seat next to him, his limbs slightly in the way. 

“You can’t make someone fall in love with you,” Otto gently reminded his young enemy. “It took me four years to admit that I was in love with Rosalie and an additional two for her to admit she loved me too. But like I said, we worked at it. We broke down each other’s barriers to each other’s affection. We were just ‘best friends’ as well and we ended up being married for over twenty years.”

“That’s...that’s pretty cool,” Spider-Man admitted. “But how’d you signal that you wanted to be more than friends?”

Otto rumbled, a deep booming laughter erupting from his throat. He had asked his father that all those years ago when he had first admitted to himself that he wanted to be more than friends with this woman who was as smart and complicated as he was. 

“I read her poetry. Yeats, Eliot, Byron, all of those Romantic poets she loved. I would recite to her love poems, sad poems, and she would laugh at me, but we would get closer. Finally, she agreed to a date - _ a romantic date-  _ and the rest, as they say, was history. I imagine this Michelle friend of yours probably wouldn’t want to hear old dead British poets, but you know her better than I do.”

“Poetry huh?”

“It never fails. Unless you’re me, of course.”

Spider-Man looked to be deep in thought, for someone whose face was covered by a mask. 

“You know Doc, you’re not a bad guy to look for advice. I’m sorry that we’re enemies.”

And Doc Ock felt a spike of sadness and regret in his heart.  _ Me too.  _ Maybe if they had known each other before the incident...the world was filled with maybes and regrets. He just had to live with them.  _ I miss you everyday Rosalie.  _

“I’m sorry too. Let’s get back to fighting before I start crying.”

“Agreed.”

In the end, Doc Ock was defeated. He was left webbed up, his arms disabled by a hack designed by Michelle for Stark Industries ( _ I knew she was smart,  _ Doc Ock thought grumpily), with a sign signed by Spider-Man. 

Otto Octavius waited for the police and wondered when he could go and be in Rosalie’s arms once more. He missed her everyday. He hoped that Spider-Man would find love with this Michelle. Just like he had found it with Rosalie.  _And lost it._

_ Feed her poetry. Or something like that.  _

**Author's Note:**

> So I watched Spider-Man 2 again and the feed her poetry scene got to me. This is going to be a two-shot, so hopefully, I'll get the second chapter up sometime this week.


End file.
